Alborada del gracioso (The Jester's Aubade) is the fourth of the five movements of Maurice Ravel's piano suite Miroirs, written in 1905. Dedicated to fellow Les Apaches member Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, it is about seven minutes long and, as part of the suite, has always been regularly played and recorded by pianists. Alborada was orchestrated by Ravel fourteen years later for use as a ballet. In this form, as a standalone orchestral piece, it is often played in concert.

Title The Spanish title has no exact translation. Alborada, or dawn in English, has various musical meanings: a song for a wedding day; a folk dance;Bromberger, Eric. Programme note , San Diego Symphony Orchestra, 15–17 May 2015, pp. 4–6 a Galician folk tune;Chase, p. 232 and a type of rhythmically free music played on bagpipes and drum."alborada" , The Oxford Companion to Music, Alison Latham (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2011. Retrieved 4 March 2021 But as usually construed for Ravel's piece it is an announcement of dawn, a sunrise song, an aubade.Chase, p. 232; and Lee, p. 318 Gracioso has roots in the troubadour and trouvère traditions: he was a figure of Spanish comedy, the genial buffoon,Lee, p. 318 the grotesque lover,Huscher, Phillip. Programme note , Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Retrieved 3 March 2021 an amusingly entertaining person,Keller, James M. Programme note , New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Retrieved 3 March 2021 a servant who comments on the actions of his superiors.Anderson, Robert. Notes to Naxos CD 8.572887 Accordingly the whole title is rendered variously as Morning Song of the Clown,Nichols, p. 93 Morning Song of the BuffoonBaker, p. 22 or The Jester's Aubade.Orenstein, p. 159

Background In the years 1904–05, as he was finishing his String Quartet, Ravel composed Miroirs (Mirrors), a suite of five short piano pieces.Nichols, p. 400 He later orchestrated two of them: the orchestral version of "Une Barque sur l'océan" (A Barque on the Ocean) came out in 1906;Nichols, p. 399 more than a decade elapsed before Ravel orchestrated the other, the "Alborada del gracioso".

The orchestration came about at the invitation of Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes. He was well acquainted with Ravel, having commissioned from him the music for Daphnis et Chloé in 1909. Diaghilev visited Spain for the first time in 1916 and was so taken with the country that he commissioned several ballets on Spanish themes. The first appeared in the same year: Leonid Massine's Las meninas, inspired by Velázquez's painting of the same name. It was danced to a composite score that included "Alborada del gracioso" (in its piano version) along with Gabriel Fauré's Pavane and pieces by Louis Aubert and Emmanuel Chabrier." Las meninas" , Bibliothèque nationale de France. Retrieved 3 March 2021 Diaghilev commissioned Ravel to orchestrate the Alborada (and the Chabrier piece, the Menuet pompeux) for a production of the ballet, retitled Les jardins d'Aranjuez, at the Alhambra Theatre, London in 1919.Nichols, pp. 202–203 Before the ballet opened in London the orchestral Alborada was premiered in Paris on 17 May 1919 by the Pasdeloup Orchestra conducted by Rhené-Baton.Nichols, p. 203

Music

The music consists of two sections of lively dance music, separated by a rhapsodic, extended song.Maycock, Robert. " Alborada del gracioso", BBC, 2014. Retrieved 5 March 2021 The opening is marked assez vif (fairly quick), ♩ = 92.Ravel, p. 3 Like the piano original, the piece begins with imitations of guitar music. In the orchestral version they are produced by the first harp, played close to the sound board, along with precisely arranged pizzicato violins and violas. The basic metre of the opening section is but Ravel varies it with occasional bars of and .

The music is mainly quiet for the first 28 bars as the themes are established. They are then brought together in what the commentator Eric Bromberger describes as "a great explosion of sound, subtly tinted by Ravel's use of castanets, tambourine, cymbals and harp". and then a fortissimo chord introduces the central episode, a plaintive melody for solo bassoon – the clown's song – alternating with shimmering string sonorities.Schiavo, Paul. Notes to Seattle Symphony Media CD SSM 1002 To represent the sounds of the extreme treble of the piano original, the accompaniment to the bassoon melody is scored for 24-part strings, some instruments bowed, others plucked, and deploying a range of harmonics, multiple stops and sul tasto effects.Russ, pp. 135–136

The music makes a gradual return to the original tempo; Ravel added four bars to the original score here, making use of woodwind tremolos. The piece builds to a conclusion and ends in what critics have variously described as "a blaze of orchestral color", "an exhilarating climax",Goodwin, Noël. Notes to Chandos CD CHAN 8850 and "a grand and glorious racket".

Instrumentation The piece is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, crotales, triangle, Basque drum, castanets, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, xylophone, two harps, and strings.

Recordings The first recording of the orchestral Alborada del gracioso was made by the Berlin State Opera Orchestra, conducted by Otto Klemperer in 1926. Since then there have been numerous versions on record. In a comparative survey of recordings for BBC Radio 3, Rob Cowan short-listed the following:"Ravel: Alborada del gracioso" , CD Review, BBC Radio 3, 2014. Retrieved 5 March 2021

OrchestraConductorYear Suisse Romande Ernest Ansermet 1951 Orchestre national de la Radiodiffusion Française André Cluytens 1953 Paris Conservatoire Albert Wolff 1959 Suisse Romande Ansermet 1960 Philharmonia Carlo Maria Giulini 1960 Paris Conservatoire Cluytens 1962 Detroit Symphony Paul Paray 1963 Orchestre de Paris Herbert von Karajan 1971 Boston Symphony Seiji Ozawa 1974 Orchestre de Paris Jean Martinon 1975 Montreal Symphony Charles Dutoit 1983 Orchestre national de France Eliahu Inbal 1987 London Symphony Claudio Abbado 1989 Berlin Philharmonic Pierre Boulez 1994 Orchestre de Paris Christoph Eschenbach 2004 Recordings recommended by other critics include: OrchestraConductorYearRef Chicago Symphony Fritz Reiner 1958 Svejda, p. 152 Philadelphia Orchestra Eugene Ormandy 1960 Royal Philharmonic André Previn 1986 March et al., p. 1503 Dallas Symphony Eduardo Mata 1988 March et al., p. 1502 Ulster Orchestra Yan Pascal Tortelier 1993 March et al., p. 1050

In 2015 the conductor François-Xavier Roth and the orchestra Les Siècles, which specialises in historically informed performance, released a recording of the Alborada using original or reproduction instruments of the period.Clements, Andrew. " Chabrier; Massenet; Ravel; Debussy CD review – joyous and wonderfully vivid" , The Guardian, 11 June 2015

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